Crimson
by Grac3
Summary: Part two of the Angel!Verse. The Doctor has been missing for two hours; anything could have happened to him in that time. Anything. Threeshot. Episode tag: Post-The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. See warnings inside.
1. Blood From Nowhere

**Warnings: **References to torture, blood

**Series summary: **The TARDIS doesn't always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but it always takes him where he needs to go; Time Lords hold a secret behind their backs, and they have a duty to follow.

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 1 – Blood From Nowhere

It was not the first revolution that they had begun on some far-flung planet. It was not even the first revolution that they had begun since Captain Jack Harkness had joined them on the TARDIS. Yet it was the first revolution that they had begun that had gone so catastrophically badly, and now Rose was running through the dungeons of the castle that they had landed the TARDIS in hours before, trying to fix the mess that they had created for themselves.

The wharl had a class system not dissimilar to that of Victorian England: there was the elite that did not have to work and spent all of their days learning intergalactic languages and playing the androgore – a musical instrument that looked more like a weapon of torture than something used to entertain – and who ruled over the workers who slaved all day for a pitiful wage that they could barely live on.

With the Doctor's help, the workers had been able to make use of their relatively pathetic weapons to overthrow the elite, who – needless to say – were not very happy about that. The problems arose when they decided to show their unhappiness about their being usurped through violence.

They did not, however, concentrate their violence on the working class who had overthrown them. In a strange code of honour, they felt that the revolution had been just, without too much unnecessary bloodshed. Their issue was with the alien who had led the revolution, who had dared to come to their planet and meddle in their affairs.

In short, the Doctor.

He had been missing for approximately two hours and, as Rose and Jack ran through the corridors of the castle, she could only wonder at what horrors her best friend was being subjected to.

"Hurry up!" she yelled at the ex-Time Agent as they raced through the corridor; up ahead, a thin, metal rectangle was visible sticking out of the wall: a fraction of a sliding door that could close on them without warning, as the circuits that controlled such things had been damaged during the struggle for power. She was surprised that Jack was so slow that day – usually he could easily outrun her – but he had been out the night before, and he no doubt had a hangover that was slowing him down.

They were only a few feet away when the sound of metal grating on stone filled the corridor, and the door ahead began to close. Rose surged forward, forcing her muscles to work as hard as they could, throwing herself through the doorway to the other side. She had only taken a few more steps before the _clang_ of the door closing rang through the hall, echoing ominously off of the walls. She spun round on her heel to see if Jack had made it through as well.

He hadn't. He was stuck on the other side, visible through the glass pane in the middle of the door that was high up enough to be level with his head. He pounded angrily against the door twice, as if that would force it to open.

Sighing, Rose jogged back to the door.

"Do you have a TARDIS key?" she yelled, unsure of whether or not he would be able to hear her through the glass.

"Yeah!" he answered, though his voice was slightly muffled.

"Go back to the TARDIS and wait for us there. Don't let any of the wharl follow you inside," she told him. Jack grinned. "What?"

"I like it when you give me orders."

Rose slammed her palm against the door, far too worried about the Doctor to put up with the American's usual antics. Jack instinctively flinched, leaning backwards away from the door as the smile dropped quickly from his face, fear seeping into his eyes as he stared through the door at the scorned woman and he considered how her wrath might manifest itself.

"Just go!" she shouted, not waiting for a reply. She turned around once more and continued down the corridor, looking through the windows of the doors of each of the rooms that she passed to see if she could see the Doctor inside.

It felt like an eternity before she found him, though in reality she had only passed five doors or so and she had been running as fast as she could. Her heart leapt into her throat as relief flooded her veins when she glanced through the window in the door and saw the Doctor inside.

The room was plain and dull: a brick cell with no window except for the one set in the thick, stone door – and even that was barred. The floor was dirty, and the entire space seemed frightfully cold; she was glad that the Doctor was still wearing his leather jacket, for she would have been worried that he would freeze to death if he wasn't.

Not that he looked particularly well anyway. He didn't appear to have any injuries – at least, none that Rose could see from that far away, for the room was at least ten foot long and he was sitting against the furthest wall from the door. Yet he was frightfully pale, and he was slumped, his head lolling to one side and his eyes struggling to remain open. His hands lay limp on the floor by his sides, the fingers of his left hand curled lazily around the sonic screwdriver.

"Doctor!" she called through the gaps between the bars over the window. His brow creased slightly, acknowledging the fact that someone was calling his name, and he sluggishly lifted his head from his shoulder and prized his eyes open. He looked exhausted, but from where Rose was standing, there didn't appear to be anything wrong with him.

The Doctor lifted the sonic a few inches off of the ground, his hand trembling as he did so. The familiar high-pitched sound reverberated off of the walls of the cell until Rose heard the lock of the door click, and he dropped his hand back to the ground again. She threw herself into the room, running over to him and collapsing to her knees by his side. Now that she was closer, she could see that he had small beads of sweat on his brow, and his eyes had begun to glaze over. He had no injuries, but there was a small pool of blood next to him on the ground, which didn't appear to have a source.

Deciding to ignore it – for it was probably that of the last creature that had been held captive in the cell – she reached forward to wrap her arm round the Doctor's middle and help him up, so that they could go back to the TARDIS and reunite with Jack.

"No!" he cried, before she had even been able to touch him. Rose froze in place, unsure of why he didn't want her to help him. Was he ashamed that he hadn't been able to escape on his own?

"What is it?" she asked, as the Doctor squeezed his eyes shut tight then forced them open again, in an effort to stay awake.

"I… can't get up," he gasped, his voice breathy and weak.

Rose glanced down at his legs, stretched out before him, wondering if there was something wrong with them that was causing the problem. She couldn't see that there was anything wrong with them, and Rose was starting to panic.

"Doctor, what's going on?" she asked.

The Doctor dropped the sonic on the ground and lifted his shaking hands, reaching out for her head. Guessing what he was going to do, she leaned forward so that he could reach her, and he placed his fingers on the side of her head. She reached up to his wrists to steady his trembling digits, and – as his eyes slipped closed – she shut her own as well.

In her mind, she saw the door again – the door that she had stepped through to see the Doctor's wings all those weeks ago in the control room of the TARDIS. It opened, as before, only enough to allow her to slip through the gap. She did just that, opening her eyes as soon as she could.

Rose let go of the Doctor's wrists, and his hands dropped to the ground either side of him. The sight of his impressive wings shocked her as much as it had before, and she was once again overwhelmed by their staggering beauty – but her wonderment was interrupted when she saw the reason that he couldn't get up.

A knife had been plunged through his left wing, pinning it to the wall behind him like a butterfly in a case; a thick river of blood was flowing from the entry wound, and dripping into the pool of blood on the ground next to the Doctor.


	2. Blood On Steel

**Warnings: **References to torture, blood, references to surgical procedures

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 2 – Blood On Steel

Two hours. That's how long he had been missing: two hours. How much of that time had been spent sitting on the floor of this dark and dingy cell, his only restraint being the knife plunged through his pinion and stuck into the wall behind him?

Rose didn't know what to do. She had no medical training, she didn't know if Jack did – and, even if he did, she and the Doctor were separated from the ex-Time Agent by a thick metal door cutting the corridor outside in two – and the only thing that came to mind when she saw that brutal dagger was 'don't pull it out!' She wasn't sure exactly how the system of veins, arteries and capillaries worked inside a wing, but judging on the steady flow of blood from the wound, she was sure that there was every chance that the Doctor would bleed to death if she tried to remove it.

But if she couldn't pull the knife out, then what was she supposed to do?

"Take it… out of the wall," the Doctor told her, his chest rising and falling deeply with the effort of drawing in enough oxygen to speak. "Not… the wing. Just the… wall…" His eyes began to drift shut again, but Rose couldn't have him falling asleep. Not only was she sure that loss of consciousness was disastrous in situations such as these, but she was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to support all his weight long enough to get back to the TARDIS.

Hoping that a shock would force him back into reality, she pushed herself up off of the ground and walked around the tip of the wing, curling her fingers around the bright red secondary feathers and gently moving the wing out of the way, so that she could reach the knife set into the wall.

From this angle, Rose could see that the knife was bigger than she had originally thought: there was a gap of about an inch between the Doctor's wing and the wall, filled with the gleaming blade. Yet the dim light pouring into the cell from the corridor outside was not shining off of a silver metal formed into a sharp weapon: it was gleaming off of the red substance coating the outside of the blade, a thick covering of blood that was itself dripping onto the floor behind the Doctor.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped closer to the knife, trapped between the wing and the wall, and reached over the top of the feathery appendage to grasp the handle of the knife protruding from the other side. She placed the palm of her other hand on the back of the wing, and gently began to move. She pulled at the handle of the knife while pushing against the back of the wing, so that the wing moved with the knife and the weapon stayed buried in the limb.

The Doctor cried out in pain, hopefully now fully awake, as the tip of the knife was yanked out of the wall, but the rest was still hanging from his wing.

Rose stood up quickly, walking out of the small corridor between the wall and the wing and circumnavigating the Doctor's body until she reached the other side. His eyes were now fully open as he gasped in pain, though what little colour he had had in his face before had now almost completely disappeared.

She knelt down by his right side, wrapping an arm around his middle and holding out her palm.

"Give me the sonic," she told him, and he did – his movements were slow and laborious, but eventually she had the metal cylinder in her hand. The Doctor reached around her waist, and – with no small amount of effort – she heaved them both to their feet. The Doctor was a little unsteady at first, and Rose stumbled slightly as the weight of his right wing began pressing down on her back. The left, she noticed, drooped sadly by his side, the feathers scraping against the dirty ground.

The trip from the TARDIS to the cell had taken a few minutes at most, but the return trip was much longer, the pair of them shuffling down the empty corridors one step at a time. When they reached the door that had separated Rose from Jack, Rose lifted the sonic, filling the corridor with the familiar buzzing sound until there was the click of the lock and the door slid open to allow them to pass.

The TARDIS had been parked in a store room, filled with crates with indeterminate contents that Rose and the Doctor had to navigate to reach the familiar blue box. Jack was nowhere to be seen; Rose could only hope that he had had the sense to wait inside for them to return. Once they reached the door, Rose lifted her hand as high as she could, so that the sonic was visible through the window above the door, and pressed the button on the side.

Inside the TARDIS, Jack either heard or saw the sonic, for a moment later, the door was wrenched open.

"What happened?" the familiar American accent reached Rose's ears, but her gaze was fixed on the floor as she sagged beneath the Doctor's weight. Remembering that Jack couldn't see the Doctor's wings and therefore had no idea why the Time Lord looked so sickly and pale, she desperately wanted to explain to him what was going on, but found that she was far too tired to do so.

Jack stepped out of the way as the two of them stumbled into the control room, closing the door behind them when they were sufficiently out of the way. They had only taken two steps onto the ramp on the other side of the door when the Doctor's knees buckled beneath him, and Rose, unable to hold up his entire weight, crashed to the ground beside him. She managed to prevent them falling completely to the floor, but she couldn't hold back a cry of surprise and pain as her knees collided with the metal grating on the floor.

Jack was by her side in seconds, offering to take over from her. The Doctor rested his forehead on her shoulder, his breathing deep and laboured. Even through the shoulder of her top, she could feel the perspiration on his forehead as the agony coursed through him. She had never seen the Doctor like this, for he had always seemed to brush pain off rather quickly (physical pain, at least), but she supposed that he had had nothing to do for the last two hours but succumb to the pain.

She turned to Jack, who was now kneeling next to her. "Can you take him to the infirmary?"

Jack nodded, as Rose moved out of the way and he took her place. Heaving the Doctor to his feet, he stopped only to ask of Rose, "What are you going to do?"

Rose pushed herself to her feet and gestured to the control panel. "I'll get us out of here. Park us on Pluto or something. Just… somewhere safe." In the growing absence of adrenaline, she was beginning to feel absolutely exhausted. Yet she knew that she couldn't crash right now: she had to get them somewhere safe, and then she would have to sort out the Doctor's wing – because Jack couldn't see them, and the Doctor was in no position to open his eyes to them.

As Jack took the Doctor off to the infirmary, Rose trudged up to the control panel and stared at the vast array of buttons and dials before her. They looked as confusing as ever, but she was sure that she had seen the Doctor operate them enough times to be able to take them somewhere far away from this planet and that dreaded cell. At least, that's what she hoped.

Taking a deep breath, she interlocked her fingers and held out her hands so that her palms faced outwards from her, stretching out her arms and cracking her knuckles. Then she sprang into action.

Putting everything that she had remembered over the past weeks and months into practice, Rose rushed around the centre console, pushing buttons and pressing dials and flicking switches. She wasn't one hundred per cent sure that she knew what she was doing, but the familiar screeching sound began to fill the TARDIS as the blue tubes in the central cylinder began to move, and suddenly they were off – hopefully somewhere as safe as could be.

Once the noises that she had always associated with flying the TARDIS began to quieten down, she wondered briefly where they had landed. They were no longer in the Time Vortex – of that she was certain – but just exactly where they were in all of time and space was a little less obvious. She rushed down the ramp to the front door, wrenching it open…

To be faced with the vast expanse of open space: dark matter as far as the eye could reach, broken only by the occasional light of a far-away star some unimaginable distance away. There were no planets or spaceships for light years around – and if that wasn't safe, then she didn't know what was.

Breathing a soft sigh of relief, Rose closed the door and turned on her heel, staring passed the centre console to the door that led to the rest of the TARDIS – somewhere beyond that door, Jack would be laying the unconscious, prone form of the Doctor on a bed in the infirmary, still clueless as to what misfortune had befallen the Time Lord.

Walking as fast as she could, she reached the infirmary in less than a minute. Jack was still standing just outside the door, looking through to the Doctor on the bed with one hand on his hip and the other running worriedly through his hair. When he heard the sound of Rose's approaching footsteps, he turned to face her, his expression creased with concern and confusion.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked, still staring at the Doctor as he slumbered on, far away from the pain of the knife sticking out of his pinion.

Rose knew that she didn't have enough time to explain the situation to the ex-Time Agent – not to mention the fact that she wasn't entirely sure that the Doctor would want her to. He had not told her about his wings until she had discovered them for herself, and she had often wondered in the weeks that had passed since then if he would have told her at all if it had not been for their Waybuh hunt in the hall of mirrors.

Besides, Jack would be of no help to the Doctor at this moment if he couldn't see what was wrong in the first place, and if Rose didn't fix the hole in his limb soon, he was likely to bleed out, for the knife wasn't doing a terribly good job of plugging the wound.

"It's… complicated," Rose sighed, looking up at Jack's face to catch his eye. "You'll just have to trust me for now. I can fix this." 'I think,' her mind added, though she chose not to vocalise that part.

Jack looked over at the Doctor one last time, then down at Rose. He must have seen the determination within her at that moment, despite her growing exhaustion, for he nodded in response.

"Okay," he said, taking a step back from the door so that Rose had enough room to get by. The blonde pushed her way through the door, forcing herself to look at the knife sticking out from the Doctor's wing as it hung off of the side of the bed. She quickly retrieved another bench that was sitting idly near the wall, carefully lifting the feathery appendage so that it was lying across the surface of the bench rather than hanging limply.

She gathered thread, a needle, gloves, and several other silver instruments that she wasn't sure of the function of but she didn't want to leave out in case they came in handy later, grabbed hold of the dagger's handle, and pulled.

The blade slid smoothly out of the hole that it had created, releasing a large globule of blood that spilled across the black feathers, marring them with a liquid that she now saw was darker than the red secondary feathers at the top of the wings.

She knew she had to move fast. Quickly getting the needle and thread ready, she began wiping the blood away so that she could see the inch-long gash in the limb and begin to sow it up. Instantly, the tips of the fingers of her white, latex gloves were bright red and slippery, but she didn't stop working even when she developed an almost blinding headache. She was vaguely aware of the heavy sound of pacing footsteps outside the door, but she ignored them.

She wasn't sure how long she had been working when she ran a wipe over the stitches one last time, ridding the feathers of the last drops of blood to be spilled. There was no more oozing from the gash – on the front or the back of the wing – and Rose considered her work done.

As she turned away to peel off her now almost completely crimson gloves, the headache that had been plaguing her almost since she had begun her ministrations transformed into a full-on migraine. Her vision was suddenly filled with a blinding white light, and – when it disappeared – all she could see was the ceiling, from her new supine position.

"What was that?" Jack called through the door, his voice muffled by the metal pane separating them, but loud enough for Rose to detect the near panic within it. "Rose? Rose!"

The world was now fading away from her, the darkness consuming her as her vision darkened. She was barely aware of her eyes slipping closed, and the last thing that she heard before she faded away was Jack calling her name.


	3. Blood Between Friends

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

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Chapter 3 – Blood Between Friends

Soft. That was the first thing that she was aware of: no longer was the surface upon which she was lying cold, hard and uncomfortable, but warm and soft, with some kind of blanket covering her body.

It was peaceful, lying there in the dark. Her limbs still felt heavy from her slumber, being dragged further down into the mattress she was lying on. The headache that had been pressing against the insides of her skull before she had lost consciousness had completely disappeared, instead replaced with a sensation not unlike having her head filled with cotton wool. She didn't want to leave this tranquil state, just barely awake though her awareness grew with each passing second.

Yet her decision to leave this peaceful place was made for her; she must have made some kind of movement, some change in her expression, which alerted those outside to the fact that she had woken up.

"Rose?" the voice was quiet but urgent, muffled slightly as the sound waves struggled to pass through the wool inside her head. Yet she still recognised the distinct American twang, and knew instantly who it was that had called her name.

A hand reached out to hers, five warm fingers curling around her own; yet they were holding onto her left hand, and the voice had come from the right. The Doctor must have been there as well, recovered before she did.

Resigning herself to the fact that she would have no choice but to leave her comfortable and quiet world, Rose opened her eyes.

The outside world was a stark contrast to the one that she had just left: it was bright and blinding, with white walls and white bedding and silver equipment. She recognised the room as the infirmary, though it seemed bigger than the room that she had passed out in; presumably the TARDIS had extended it, creating another bed for a second patient.

Two figures were leaning over her, their faces creased with worry and concern: Jack on the right, the Doctor on the left. As she was still blinking away the shock of the stark contrast in lighting, a hand slipped behind her back and slowly lifted her into a sitting position. The Doctor's grip on her fingers disappeared as he reached behind her to prop up the pillow on which her head had been resting, so that she could sit back against it. The movement made her head spin once more, and she raised her fingers to her temple as she settled into the pillow behind her. The disorientation was momentary, however, and soon she had readjusted to living in the real world once more.

Two stools had been set up either side of her, so that both of her companions could sit down next for her as they awaited her return to their world of wakefulness. As always, Jack wore his emotions more plainly in his expression than the Doctor did, while the Time Lord sat there quietly, steely, while a storm raged within his eyes. She smiled at them, a small twitch of the corners of her mouth, and they both seemed to be placated: Jack returned the smile, while the Doctor's stiff shoulders relaxed somewhat.

As Rose watched the Doctor loosen slightly, she realised that she could no longer see his wings: at some point during the time that she had spent unconscious, he must have closed the door in her mind. She couldn't tell whether or not her stitches had been successful, but she gathered by the Doctor's complexion and the fact that he was awake that she must have at least done some good.

"You gave us quite a scare there," Jack chuckled with relief, his voice little more than a huff of breath.

Rose's brow furrowed. "Why? What happened?" she asked, looking between the two of them. "How long have I been out for?"

"About eight hours," the Doctor explained. "I woke up about six hours ago."

"I had to practically break the door down when I heard you fall," Jack continued, filling in the gaps from before the Doctor had woken up. "The TARDIS made another bed for me to put you on, but the Doctor didn't wake up for another two hours."

"What happened to me?" Rose asked, looking from Jack to the Doctor, for some reason expecting him to know more about her condition than the one who had been awake at the time she had collapsed.

The Doctor took a deep breath, and then looked over at Jack. The ex-Time Agent nodded briefly and stood up, heading for the door. Rose opened her mouth to protest, to tell him that she didn't mind if he stayed, but he was gone before she could: though, just before he disappeared out of the door into the corridor beyond, Jack looked behind him briefly, at the empty space next to the Doctor. As the door closed behind the American, Rose realised that in the six hours that they had been alone together, Jack had been shown the Doctor's wings.

When they were alone again, Rose turned fully to the Doctor, now even more worried. "Doctor?"

He didn't answer at first, pausing as though unsure of how to word what he had to say.

"When I showed you my wings the first time, I told you that you couldn't look at them for too long," he began, his voice slow and almost hesitating.

Rose nodded absent-mindedly, remembering the odd conversation that they had had up to that particular revelation – though, by this point, she was finding that most conversations with the Doctor seemed to redefine 'odd'.

"You did a good job on my wing," he continued, smiling slightly – though it was a sad smile, and Rose wasn't sure why, "but you looked at them too long. The perception filters were down, and it was weakening you. Even while you were unconscious, your body was still capable of knowing the wings were there, of being able to touch them or hear the feathers ruffle. I put the filters back up as soon as I woke up, but…"

The Doctor trailed off, looking down at the floor and refusing to lift his gaze to her face.

"Doctor?" Rose said tentatively, though she had a feeling that she knew exactly what he was going to say next.

"You almost died, Rose!" he exclaimed, looking back up at her with the same tortured and pained expression that he wore on his face whenever the Time War was mentioned, or something happened that reminded him of that awful day when he had lost his entire world and all his friends and family. It broke Rose's heart to see that look, but she knew that she would rather be seeing that expression now than having to experience the alternative.

"So did you," she murmured, remembering how weak the Doctor had been when she had found him in the cell, all the blood that he had lost from the ugly wound in his limb, and how he had collapsed as soon as they were inside the TARDIS, unable to carry even the smallest portion of his own weight any longer.

She hadn't even thought twice about stitching up the wound, and his warning from weeks before – from the very first time that she had seen his wings – couldn't have been further from her mind as she did so. She simply hadn't even been considering that there could have been any danger to herself; all she had seen was an injured Doctor: an injured Doctor whom only she could heal.

The Doctor let out a large huff of breath, almost a laugh but with no real sound behind it. He shook his head almost absent-mindedly, the familiar silly grin returning to his lips, even if the happiness in his eyes was still accompanied with the pain of having almost lost his companion.

"You're fantastic," he breathed, standing up from his stool and wrapping his arms around her. Rose tried to return the hug as best she could, though the angles were awkward and he stood so much taller over her while she was still sitting on the bed.

"Thank you," the Doctor murmured, almost too quiet for Rose to hear – and she guessed that that was his intention. She squeezed his shoulders affectionately in reply, thankful that he was alive and well once more, and grateful that she had had a part to play in it.

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**A.N.:** This story isn't been completely done and dusted yet; the next story (which I have already written and will hopefully be posted within the next couple of weeks) is a missing scene from this story, set between chapters 2 and 3 - basically the interaction between Jack and the Doctor.

**UPDATE 20/06/14****:** The next part of the Angel!Verse, While Rose Was Sleeping, is up now.


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